Illinois Senate Votes to Support Homosexual “Marriage”

From Illinois Family Action:

Despite the fact that Illinois is facing serious financial and unemployment issues, including a bankrupt pension system, the Illinois Senate recently approved a bill to redefine marriage and family — on St. Valentine’s Day no less.

The vote results were 34-21 with 2 voting present. This destructive and foolish decision reveals the ignorance — or in some cases cowardice — of those who voted for the legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriage. Lawmakers who approved this proposal have now formally and publicly declared that government-sanctioned marriage has no inherent connection to sexual complementarity or reproductive potential. They have proclaimed that the sole inherent constituent feature of marriage is love.

One of the legislators in the Illinois Senate who joined with anti-family proponents of same-sex marriage is Jason Barickman, a freshman Republican Senator from Bloomington. Barickman, as recently as last week, pledged to McLean County GOP Chairman John Parrott that he was against the proposal. He didn’t follow through on that promise.

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Senator Barickman is misleading people by suggesting the only reason he voted for the same-sex marriage bill is because he wanted to protect religious liberties. That claim is, at best, disingenuous.These are his own words from the senate floor — speaking in favor of marriage redefinition:

“Along with these religious protections, I believe the people of Illinois want our government to give individuals freedom over their life decisions. We want fairness under the law. And so for me, this is simply the right thing to do. I will be voting yes to Senate Bill 10. Thank you.”

“Freedom?” — homosexuals have the liberty to have relationships with any consenting adult they wish. Who is denying them “freedom?”

“Fairness?” — the suggestion is that homosexual relationships are equal to that of heterosexual relationships. That is not true. Homosexual relationships are NOT equal to one man, one woman marriage. Treating them as if they were different is fair. They are different! Moreover, is it fair that Christian business-owners like Jim Walder have to violate their convictions and violate their religious beliefs or face government legal action and penalties?

“The right thing to do?” — the right thing to do would have been to speak and vote in favor of the institutions of marriage and family and not cave into the pressure from the homosexual lobby. The right thing to do would have been to fight for the best interest of children, freedom of conscience, religious liberty and the traditional culture of Illinois. The right thing to do would have been to stand boldly against the radical agents of change.

Sen. Barickman’s closing arguments on the Illinois Senate floor are shocking. He used all the right liberal slogans in his advocacy for this terrible legislation. His predecessor, Senator Shane Cultra, would have never succumbed to the lies of the Left.

IFI’s Laurie Higgins proposes that Sen. Barickman and other proponents of marriage redefinition answer this question: “If government-recognized marriage is solely about love with no inherent connection to either sexual complementarity or reproductive potential, why shouldn’t plural marriages or homosexual sibling ‘marriages’ be legalized?”

Or to put it more plainly, if marriage is solely about “love,” why are we banning the “B” in LGBTQ from marrying both a male and a female? Why limit it to only two? Of course, it isn’t hard to imagine that this will be on the slippery slope agenda in a few short years.

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“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.” —James Madison (1792)